P-Day: Coming Soon to A Campus Near You

Loyal reader RB tipped us off to this article, which was linked by James Taranto at Best of the Web yesterday. Apparently, some young conservatives at Roger Williams showed some terrific creativity in mocking "The Vagina Monologues." Man, if I was still in college... well, let's just say my fraternity might have sponsored this (actually, let me re-phrase this -- we would have sponsored this, although I shudder to think what Wojr might have done with this idea)...

College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate “V-Day” (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students, Monique Stuart and Andy Mainiero, have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day “mascot” — a friendly looking “penis” named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs, John King.

The P-Day satirists are the first to admit that their initiative is tasteless and crude. But they rightly point out that V-Day is far more extreme. They are shocked that the administration has come down hard on their good-natured spoof, when all along it has been completely accommodating to the in-your-face vulgarity of the vagina activists.

...The week before V-Day, the Roger Williams campus was plastered with flyers emblazoned with slogans such as “My Vagina is Flirty” and “My Vagina is Huggable.” There was a widely publicized “orgasm workshop.” On the day of the play, the V-warriors sold lollipops in the in the shape of–-guess what? Last year, the student union was flooded with questionnaires asking unsuspecting students questions like “What does your Vagina smell like?” None of this offended the administration or elicited any reprimands, probations, or confiscations.

The campus conservatives artfully (in the college sense of "artful") mimicked the V-Day campaign. They papered the school with flyers that said, “My penis is majestic” and “My penis is hilarious.” The caption on one handout read, “My Penis is studious.” It showed Testaclese reclining on a couch reading Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft America.

“Testaclese” tipped the scales when he approached the university Provost, Edward J. Kavanagh, outside the student union. Apparently taking him/it for a giant mushroom, Provost Kavanagh cheerfully greeted him. But when Testaclese presented him with an honorary award as a campus “Penis Warrior,” the stunned official realized that it was no mushroom. After this incident, which was recorded on videotape, the promoters of P-Day were ordered to cease circulating their flyers and to keep Testaclese off campus grounds. Mindful of how school officers had never once protested any of the antics of Vagina warriors, the P-warriors did not comply. The Testaclese costume was then confiscated and formal charges followed.

This guy's in higher education, and he thought a giant phallus was a mushroom? I also want to congratulate myself on avoiding the need to use a graphic pun in the headline.

Jokes aside, this reminds me of the affirmative action bake sales employed by College Republicans on campuses across the country, except that this one's even funnier and harder to shut down. On most college campuses, there's probably already guys dressed like this running around. We used to call them pledges. The biggest problem for the left is that they lack a sense of humor about something like this -- if women can make use of the First Amendment to openly discuss their reproductive organs and display symbolic images of their gentialia everywhere, why can't men?

With that being said... little brother, you're at the same Catholic institution of higher learning I attended. Unless Benedict XVI makes some serious changes, I'd suggest letting the guys at Penn and Drexel handle this one. Or the guys in my fraternity.